Hashtag facepalm: Emoji Movie star makes inelegant splash at Cannes

CANNES, France (Reuters) - It's an annual staple at Cannes: a brash American movie stages a publicity stunt ahead of the film festival. But for the star of "The Emoji Movie", things did not quite go as planned.

Parasailing onto a speedboat off the beach, actor T.J. Miller made a safe landing, only then to fall into the sea and perform the rest of the media event soaked.

Miller, who appeared in superhero film "Deadpool" and the HBO sitcom "Silicon Valley", voices Gene, who, according to the online movie guide IMDb, is "a multi-expressional emoji, (who) sets out on a journey to become a normal emoji".

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Enjoying the incongruity of promoting a film based on text message characters at the world's foremost high-brow cinema festival, Miller, clad in a dripping-wet yellow tuxedo, whooped as he pressed a giant button that set off an explosion of confetti.

“Confetti canon?" he shouted.

"I mean, Sony's gone all out – hashtag Emoji Movie!”

"The Emoji Movie" is not showing in Cannes, which runs from May 17 to May 28. It is set to be released in the United States on July 28.